Solid hardwood and engineered wood flooring are splendid décor items while still having a reputation for durability and endurance. This feature of resilience should imply that it can withstand any manner of maltreatment and still retain its attractiveness.
Unfortunately this is not the real life scenario. A number of factors can impose punishing treatment on your impeccable wooden floors and render them disfigured and scarred. Ensuring a minimum degree of protection for your glazed and beautiful wooden floors can go a long way in bequeathing such treasure to generations to come.
There are simple but effective ways to effectuate this with hardly any expense too.
Emplace a Scrubbing Foot Mat at the Entrance
Hard particles of dirt and debris will track into the house on the underfoot of people and animals. Diminutive in size it may remain unnoticed and cleaning it off will not happen. What happens next is that it forms an abrasive texture much like sandpaper, with soles of shod feet treading on wooden floors and planking. The resulting scratches and dents can cause significant damage to your wooden flooring. Placing a good, wire threaded mat at your front door to induce your visitors to scrub off before they enter. Maintain a more frequent cleaning schedule just for you wooden floored rooms to keep them debris free and pristine
Limit Floor’s Traffic Impact and Never Allow Shoes with Spikes on Floor
If your wooden floored rooms can be sequestered, do so and limit the thoroughfare in them. This significantly reduces the chances of damage from scratches and scraping. Keep a sharp eye on footwear that contains spikes or high heels. Gently but firmly insist on visitors removing their footwear at the entrance itself if you happen to notice these types of features.
Install Furniture Pads
Heavy pieces of furniture should be mounted on plastic or rubber bushes to prevent gouging and scraping the wooden planks of flooring. Some of these devices come as sliders and glides. Others are worn like socks on the legs of furniture.
Choose a Durable Finish for your Engineered Flooring
Engineered wood flooring comes in a reinforced veneer that gives it extra protection from harsh abuse like spike gouges and dirt scratches. In order to limit the damage choose engineered wood with a strong lacquered finish like ‘brushed and oiled’.. Oiled finished engineered wood flooring be repaired and hidden with more oil when damaged by scratches and scuffs as the oil can be rubbed into the marks to hide them.
Maintain Suitable Conditions for your Flooring
Your flooring project should envision the effect contraction and expansion of wood at the very inception itself. The installation process should include compensation for this variation. The consequences of ignoring this important caveat are warped and wasted material resulting in exorbitant expense at re-flooring. Weather control within the room with coolers or conditioners should have been planned for, in order to maintain a stable environment with regard to heat and humidity.
Wood flooring in general is susceptible to the effects are of moisture. Engineered wood flooring may not deteriorate as much as solid wood flooring, but its hardwood upper, the veneer requires care and maintenance.
Engineered wood flooring should ideally be maintained with heating. A temperature between 18°C and 28°C is conducive to the integrity of the flooring. Typically a home has this temperature as the norm, so it can be easily maintained. Try to avoid a temperature drop below 16 to prevent over-expansion / contraction at any cost. Spaces with wood floorings should keep the humidity at the normal level which is 40-70% RH in UK. A hygrometer can indicate the humidity indoors.
A final word about protecting your wooden floor boards – avoid harsh and stringent cleaning
agents while sanitizing the floors. Harmful chemicals are the bane of wooden planking on floors and should be painstakingly avoided. This Article is published by Trade Flooring UK.